The trees and shrubbery seemed well-groomed and social, like pleasant people.

In this world people have to pay an extortionate price for any exceptional gift whatever.

Thea was still under the belief that public opinion could be placated; that if you clucked often enough, the hens would mistake you for one of themselves.

Wherever humanity has made that hardest of all starts and lifted itself out of mere brutality is a sacred spot.

From two ears that had grown side by side, the grains of one shot up joyfully into the light, projecting themselves into the future, and the grains from the other lay still in the earth and rotted; and nobody knew why.

Ugly accidents happen . . . always have and always will. But the failures are swept back into the pile and forgotten. They don`t leave any lasting scar in the world, and they don`t affect the future. The things that last are the good things. The people who forge ahead and do something, they really count.

Too much detail is apt, like any other form of extravagance, to become slightly vulgar.